The Cruiser mousebot I have will be a great platform for prototyping the navigation solutions, but if I were to really enter this competition I might well need something larger, faster, and more expandable. I'd love to give this a try, but it may be reaching for the impossible...

...at least in terms of budget and time. I'm enrolled in a Systems Engineering masters program at GWU through work and those classes start up soon. The other "minor" issue is that the competition is in March. Eek! That's not much time to build what will probably be a relatively complex robot from scratch. Seeings as how I've never built a robot before! Meanwhile I want to get my Jeep ready for Moab by April.

Nevertheless I've started some preliminary planning, using a systems engineering approach. I thought I'd share what I've done so far as it might be of interest.